


still, there were mornings

by EmmaArthur (EchoBleu)



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Deserves Nice Things, Alex centric, Aliens have bonds with people, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Disabled Character, Chronic Illness, Family, Fix-It, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Love Triangle, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sort Of, Soul Bond, With Season 2 Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24882760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoBleu/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: After Caulfield, Alex navigates his family legacy, protecting the alien secrets, helping his friends, and his mysterious chronic illness while trying to support Michael in his grief.Or what season 2 could have been, plus some soul bound shenanigans.
Relationships: Background Echo - Relationship, Friendships all around, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 39
Kudos: 138





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes off right at the end of season 1, though with a few slight differences that will be made clear. It will incorporate many elements of season 2 but without following its plot and go into its own direction. 
> 
> Among the things you will _not_ find in this AU are love triangles (especially involving threesomes), pregnancies, heart transplants and vengeful mothers. What you may find instead: friendships and family dynamics, Alex being a badass, Malex getting together. I hope you'll like it!
> 
> [mentions of coma, vomiting, mentions of the whole Noah business and of Jesse Manes]

Alex sighs, sitting back down into the lawn chair in front of Michael's Airstream. He's been here for hours, and Michael has yet to show his face. It's more and more worrying, after his state last night. Alex doesn't want to think about the blood on his shirt, or the panic in his eyes, but he can't help it, especially as time passes and there's still no sign of him.

He presses his arm against his stomach with a moan as another cramp overtakes him. Dammit. He's been sick most of the day−all week, actually. He doesn't have anything left in his stomach to throw up, but he still retches over the arm of the chair. Now's really not the time for a flare-up, but it's the worse he's had in years.

He's cold, and his skin is clammy, which means he must be running a fever again. And as if that wasn't enough, his leg is killing him from sitting in the same position for too long. He shouldn't even have his prosthesis on, not with how swollen his stump was this morning. Running from a bomb didn't do him any good, neither did driving a non-modified car for six hours in the same day.

There's a brief flash of hope when his phone rings, but Michael never calls him. Liz's picture  appears on the screen  instead .

“Liz?” Alex answers.

Liz coughs before  responding , her voice raspy.  “ H ey.”

“Are you okay? You sounds rough.” Alex isn't sure he sounds much better, but she seems awfully tired.

“Yeah, I, uh...I'm sick again, and it's been a rough few days.”

“Do you need anything?” Alex asks. “Do you have someone with you?”

“My Dad's here,” Liz answers. “It's nothing, I'll be okay, it's just a bad flare I guess.”

“Yeah, I haven't been feeling too hot either recently. I guess there's been a lot of stress going round.”

Liz snorts. “You could say that. Did anyone update you on the serial killer?”

“Michael told me it was Isobel's husband and that they had him.” Alex had to coax it out of him, yesterday in the car, and that was _before_ Michael watched his mother die. God, Alex should be with him, wherever he is. He hopes Michael isn't alone, that he's at least with his siblings.

“Your information is a bit out of date,” Liz says. “Noah's dead. Max killed him.”

“What happened?”

“Uh, he escaped, and he stabbed me. I'm fine, Kyle stitched me up, and then Max healed me. He used Isobel to get Max and Michael to the turquoise mines, but Max channeled lightning and electrocuted him.”

“ _Channeled lightning_?” Alex sputters. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, it was all kinds of dramatic, apparently. I wasn't there, I was throwing up in my dad's toilet.”

Alex sighs. “Are you sure you don't need anything?”

“Yeah, I'm−” Liz interrupts herself. “Oh, Dios mío, it hurts,” she moans. There's a thump, as if her phone fell down.

“Liz?” Alex asks. He hears Arturo's voice on the other end of the phone calling her too. “Liz!”

F or a while, he can only hear Arturo's panicked voice. “Arturo!” he calls into the phone.

“Alex!” Arturo's voice finally comes closer. “Something's wrong. I can't wake her up.”

“She passed out? Is she breathing?”

“Yes, but she won't wake up!”

Alex takes a breath. “Okay, call 911. I'll call Kyle to see if he's at the hospital, and I'll meet you there, alright?”

“Alright,” Arturo repeats, praying in Spanish under his breath.

Alex limp-runs to his car, and calls Kyle at the same time as he starts the engine. “Kyle! Where are you?”

“Uh, I was about to call you,” Kyle answers, sounding harassed. “I'm at the bunker. I, uh, I have a bit of an issue.”

“Yeah, so do I! Liz is real sick, she just passed out.”

“Oh, uh...fuck!” Kyle exclaims. “Listen, your father just tried to kill me.”

“What? My father's in Niger!”

“Well, he's clearly not, because he's unconscious in the middle of the bunker right now.”

Alex wants to thump his head on the wheel, but it doesn't seem like a great idea while driving. To top it off, he has to swallow bile again before answering.

“Did you knock him out?” he asks.

“I injected him with barbiturates. He should be out for a few hours, but he'll need to be in the hospital, or he'll stop breathing.”

“I'm of half a mind to let that happen, but fine. Can you take him to the hospital? Make up some excuse or whatever? I'm going for Liz, so I'll meet you there.”

Kyle takes a deep breath, and Alex realizes how much he must be panicking. He's a civilian. He already lived through some seriously traumatizing things yesterday in Caulfield, and now this. The fact that Alex is trained for this, that he's had weeks that were actually much more extreme than this one, doesn't mean he should forget that it's probably not the case for his friends.

“I'll handle it, okay?” he says. “Just get him to the hospital, and I'll take it from there, you'll just do your job as a doctor.”

“Okay,” Kyle breathes. “Thanks.”

For the next hour, Alex almost forgets about Michael. Liz and Arturo make it to the hospital first, just before he does, and he holds Arturo's hand through filling out the forms, while a still unconscious Liz is taken for exams. Not ten minutes later, Kyle shows up with Jesse Manes in the back of his car. Together, he and Kyle work out a way for his father to be admitted as a coma patient for now, falsifying a medical file that will pass most inspections, even though it's a rush job of inventing scans and hacking into the hospital's system.  They will deal with the problem of Kyle having to keep sedating him without getting caught later. Hopefully by the time it's needed, they'll have found a better solution.

Alex goes back to the ER waiting room once he's done everything he could, not keen on staying at his father's bedside. Arturo is still there waiting for Liz to be settled into a room.

“She hasn't woken up,” he explains. “The scans are...inconclusive, that's what they said.”

Alex squeezes his hand. “She'll be okay,” he says. “She's a fighter. Did you tell them about her illness?”

“Yes, but they don't know what it is, so it doesn't help.”

“They'll figure it out, and she'll wake up,” he assures, with as much conviction as he can manage.

A cellphone rings close to them. It's not Alex's ringtone, and Arturo frowns in confusion as well. “That's Liz's phone,” he says. He looks down at Liz's jacket, hooked around his arm.

By the time  he's found the phone in the pocket of the jacket, it has stopped ringing.

“Why would Michael Guerin call my daughter?” Arturo frowns, staring at it.

Alex freezes. He still has no news from Michael, despite the two voicemails and five increasingly worried texts he sent. Why would Michael call Liz?

“Let me ask him,” he offers. If the reason is alien, then Arturo probably shouldn't be the one who answers. Arturo hands him the phone just as it starts ringing again.

“Hello?” Alex picks up.

Michael makes a strange sound at the other end, then, “Alex? I was trying to call Liz.” He sounds frazzled, agitated.

“It's her phone, but she can't pick up,” Alex says. “She's in the hospital. Is it anything urgent?”

“Uh, yeah,” Michael drawls. “Wait, in the hospital? What happened?”

“We don't know, she just passed out.”

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.”

“Guerin, what's going on?” Alex asks when Michael shows no sign of stopping his litany of curses. He really sounds rough, so whatever it is must be bad. Worse than Liz being unconscious.

“I, uh. Max is−” Michael's voice breaks. “Max is−”

Alex's stomach drops. “Max is dead? How? Where are you?”

“Out in the turquoise mines. Isobel's here to. And, um. Rosa.”

“What?” Alex opens his mouth in shock. Arturo is looking more and more concerned beside him. Alex lowers the volume on the phone's speaker to make sure Arturo can't hear whatever Michael is about to say.

“Rosa Ortecho. Max...resurrected her. Somehow.”

Alex blinks. And brings a hand to his mouth. He waits a beat, trying to make his brain make sense of this, but it doesn't come.

“Oh,” he murmurs.

“That's why I was calling Liz.” Michael sounds more lost than Alex is.

“Okay,” Alex says, trying to gain back some control over his thoughts. He steps away from Arturo with a reassuring wave of his hand. “What do you need?”

“I don't know,” Michael sighs. “We put Max inside a pod. Iz...she thinks maybe we can resurrect him too. I don't know.”

A pod. Right, the aliens hatched out of pods. The pods put them in some kind of stasis, Alex thinks. That's what Kyle told him. “Good,” he says. At least Max is taken care of for right now. There are too many things at once. “Is Isobel holding on?”

“Not really,” Michael lets out a mirthless laugh.

“What about you?” Alex asks.

“I−” Michael hesitates. “For now.”

“Okay. Rosa. She's alive?”

“Yes.”

“Is she...awake? Talking?”

“Yes, she seems fine. Still nineteen. Terrified. I don't know how to explain it to her.”

Maybe that's something Alex can do. His father is taken care of, and so is Liz. There's nothing more he can do here beside keep Arturo company.

“Michael, listen to me,” he says slowly. Michael is rattled enough that his focus is probably all over the place, so Alex needs to anchor him somehow. “I need you to get Isobel and Rosa into a car and drive them to my place. Can you do that?” He doesn't know if Michael is safe to drive, but this is the best option. It could take him hours to get to them and find the right cave, even with coordinates, and they need to get out of there before one of them loses it. It's an explosive situation.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Michael says shakily.

“I'll meet you there,” Alex says.

“Okay. Thanks.”

Michael hangs up, and Alex finds himself staring at the phone in his hand for longer than he means to. This is a lot. He looks up to see that Arturo is looking at him with even more worry in his eyes.

“What's wrong, mijo?” he asks.

“It's nothing,” Alex says. “I'll take care of it. Liz is the most important right now.”

“Go on, then. I'll be alright here.”

Alex hands him Liz's phone back. “Call me if there's any update?”

“Of course,” Arturo nods.

*

Alex has exactly fifteen minutes to himself before Michael, Isobel and Rosa make it to his house. He uses them to take another dose of painkillers and anti-emetics, and generally just take a moment to breathe. Not think. He can't think right now, or he'll work himself into an anxiety attack. Just breathe, the way he taught himself out in the Iraqi desert. Slowly breathe the fear and the pain−and hopefully the fever−away.

He grabs one of his crutches from his bedroom and props it up on his keyboard where he can reach easily. He shouldn't still be on his prosthesis  and his leg aches fiercely , but he can't afford that much vulnerability when he might have to move quickly. Plus, if Rosa is still nineteen, suddenly seeing him missing a leg on top of being ten years older might be too much of a shock.

H e limps over to the door when he hears Michael's truck pull up. Michael is disheveled but focused, his gaze hooking straight to Alex's as soon as he gets out of the driver's seat. Isobel looks lost, her eyes red and puffy, her movements clumsy.

And Rosa looks...like Rosa. Which should be impossible.

She's scared and disoriented, Alex can tell when he gets over the initial shock. She doesn't look a day over nineteen, exactly like when he last saw her−but her face faded in his mind, only held there by photographs. This is real. She's real, and alive.

Her gaze falls on Alex, and he wants to squirm. He squares his shoulders instead, out of long practice, and waves them in. Michael has to guide Isobel inside, as she makes no move to walk on her own.

“Alex, I−they said−please tell me it's not true,” Rosa exclaims as soon as they're inside. Then she pauses. “You look different.”

Alex sighs and sits down in his favorite chair. Michael makes Isobel sit down on the couch and stays beside her. “Rosa, please sit down,” Alex says. “Let me explain.”

Not that he knows how to explain anything. How is Rosa even alive? He hopes Michael will be able to fill in the blanks, because he's only learned what actually happened to Rosa a few days ago, and he hasn't digested that yet. It got somewhat swallowed by all the other new information about the aliens, about Michael and his alien ship and Alex's father and Caulfield, so he hasn't had time to sort out his feelings on the matter.

“Where are we?” Rosa asks, fidgeting with the sleeve of the oversize jacket she's wearing. It's Isobel's, Alex thinks. The pants she has on are so large it's comical, and Alex recognizes Michael's spare pair of jeans that he keeps in his truck.

“My house,” Alex answers. “What have you told her?” he directs the question at Michael. Isobel is just staring into space, not with them at all.

“Just the basics,” Michael says−which isn't very helpful.

“He said this is 2018,” Rosa whispers. “That's not possible, is it? He said I was dead.”

“It's true,” Alex sighs. “You were dead for ten years. We're all 28.”

“Well, fuck.”

Alex has to bite his tongue, overtaken by the sudden urge to laugh. “That's an adequate summary of the situation,” he says.

Rosa cracks up first, and in seconds they're both laughing convulsively. There's a frantic edge to it, enough that Alex knows Rosa doesn't think this is a joke, she just needs to let this anxious energy out somehow. Michael looks between them, lost. Isobel doesn't even muster the will to wonder what is wrong, and she keeps staring at her hands.

Their laughing runs its course quickly, and ends abruptly. Rosa sobers up and squints at Alex. “You've changed,” she says. “And you look like hell.”

“Thanks,” Alex replies dryly. “You don't look like a ten-year-old corpse.”

Rosa looks down at her own body in something like panic, as if searching for decaying flesh or even wrinkles. They've watched enough horror movies together that Alex gets it.

“Too soon?” he asks. “Sorry. You look fine. This just seems−”

“Impossible,” Michael finishes for him.

“Speaking of impossible,” Rosa says. “I've grown up literally surrounded by plastic little green men, but...real aliens? With fucking superpowers?”

Alex nods wordlessly, sustaining her gaze.

“These guys?” Rosa nods toward Michael and Isobel.

Alex nods again. Michael narrows his eyes and the sheet music on the keyboard's stand start levitating. Rosa turns her head in surprise, which allows Alex to hide his sudden stomach cramp. Shit. Just when he was starting to feel a little better. He can't deal with this right now.

“Wow,” Rosa murmurs. “I mean, I knew Izzy was...different, but−”

Isobel freezes, her eyes suddenly snapping to Rosa. Michael swallows.

“Um,” Alex hesitates. “How much do you remember of the day you died?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even sure what to say about the fact that I let this sit for two months, during which I wrote basically nothing. But. Here's chapter 2.

It takes a while to get Rosa up to speed, and even longer to calm her down afterwards. She explodes in anger first, when she hears about what Michael, Max and Isobel did to cover up her murder. Michael tries to gloss over it, over the hate that Arturo has been facing ever since, but Alex decides right there that she deserves to know. It's better that she finds out from them than on her own, and if Michael and Isobel are uncomfortable with it, well that's not Rosa's problem, is it?

He gets why they did what they did, but it doesn't make it right. They were scared kids faced with a terrible threat, and they made a mistake that they spent ten years regretting, according to Michael − though Alex isn't sure _what_ Michael regrets, exactly − but they also spent those ten years doing nothing to rectify it. It's not on Alex to make them face consequences, but Rosa's murderous looks tells him that she's not going to let them forget.

That is, if she gets the chance. Planning for anything beyond the next few hours − and then, even that − seems impossible right now. Rosa collapses onto the piano seat after her burst of rage and folds in on herself, looking younger than even her nineteen years. “Dad,” she murmurs. “Is he okay? Liz.” She looks up in alarm. “Fuck, you said Liz was in the hospital?”

Alex hasn't said it, so he assumes that she heard Michael on the phone with him earlier. He quickly checks his phone to make sure there's no update from Arturo. There's nothing.

“Yes,” he says. “But she's gonna be okay.” He doesn't know if that's true.

“What happened? I want to see her.”

“She's still having exams done, we can't see her just yet,” Alex says. “Besides, you can't go out like that, people could recognize you.”

Rosa glares at him. “So what am I supposed to do, hide in here forever? I want to see Dad.”

“We can't tell him,” Michael intervenes. “If we tell him, then we'll have to tell him about us.”

Alex throws him a look, just as Rosa turns to round  on  him.  Alex stops her with a gesture. “We'll figure that out as soon as possible, alright? Liz should have a say in this too, but I doubt we can avoid telling Arturo at this point. You want to keep Rosa away from him forever?”

Michael runs a hand down his face. “No. I don't know,” he whispers. “I can't think straight right now.”

“Which is why we're all going to get some sleep,” Alex says. “It's ten pm, and nothing more is going to be accomplished tonight.” He still needs to check on Kyle and his father, and then Arturo. “I have a guest room, so Rosa can stay here for the time being.”

“I want to go home, Michael,” Isobel speaks for the first time in the whole evening, her voice rough from too much crying.

“Home? To your house? Are you sure?” Michael asks.

Isobel nods.

“Okay. I'll stay with you tonight, then.” He swallows. “You two gonna be okay?”

“Yes,” Alex nods firmly. Isobel and Michael probably need some time by themselves. They haven't really registered Max's death yet. Alex has no idea if the idea of resurrecting him too hold any merit, but it doesn't really change the reality of right now: Max is gone.

Alex can only hope that it doesn't hit Michael while he's driving to Isobel's house.

*

Rosa relaxes a little once the aliens are gone, but she still looks lost and panicked. There isn't much to be done about that, Alex thinks. She's going to have a lot to process. Ten missing years. He gives her one of his softest tee-shirts to sleep in and shows her to the guest room, where she simply curls up on the bed without a word.

Alex steps outside to call Kyle, so he doesn't bother her.

“Can you keep my father under until the morning?” he asks when Kyle picks up.

“Shouldn't be a problem. It won't last forever, but the barbiturates are still in his system.”

“Good.” Alex debates with himself about updating Kyle on the rest of it. In the end, he decides against it for now, because of how frazzled Kyle still sounds. He took a bullet to the chest, today. The vest may have protected him from dying, but he still took a bullet. A bullet that Alex's own father fired.

“ _This is the monster that killed him_.”

Alex abruptly sits down on one of his patio chairs. Kyle almost died at his father's hand. A day after learning that Jesse Manes murdered Jim Valenti, he tried again. Alex has very little doubt that he would have been next on his father's list, and yet his own murder it seems so much less of a crime than targeting innocent, compassionate Kyle Valenti.

“Get some rest,” he says. “Tomorrow's Sunday, so I'm off work. We can take the time to figure out where we go from there. Is your chest okay?”

“Bruised, but no cracked ribs, I checked. I'll be fine.”

Except for the trauma of  _nearly getting murdered_ . If Kyle doesn't develop some sort of PTSD from that… If Rosa doesn't, if Michael doesn't, if Isobel doesn't…

Fuck.

“Come over in the morning, okay?”

“I'll be there at nine,” Kyle answers.

Alex takes a minute to breathe after he hangs up, dangerously close to panicking. He needs to think proactively, not let himself be overtaken by emotions. Emotions won't help him.

He has a quick call with Arturo, to check that there is no news on Liz − she still hasn't woken up, and the exams yielded nothing − and that Arturo can get back home safely on his own. Alex would offer to pick him up, but he also doesn't want to leave Rosa alone.

“I'll be fine, mijo,” Arturo assures him. “I may not look like it, but I'm sturdy inside. I can tell you have a lot going on, so don't worry about me.”

“Alright, I won't,” Alex promises. “Text me if there's any news?”

“Of course.”

After that, Alex heads back inside. Rosa doesn't seem to have moved, so he goes through his evening routine, thankful for the master bathroom that allows him to avoid walking down the  hallway on crutches where Rosa might see.

Once done, he sits on his bed with his laptop and starts working on a list.

_To do ASAP,_ he writes at the top. He thinks about it for a while, reordering things in his head.

_\- check on Liz in the morning_

_\- check on Michael & Kyle_

_\- check Dad's status_

_\- find a way to keep him harmless without endangering Kyle's job_

_\- find where Flint went and what the bomb he talked about really is_

_\- dig deeper into Caulfield files_

_\- make Rosa a new ID_

_-_ _find out where Noah's body is,_ he adds as an afterthought. Michael and his siblings may have  gotten rid of bodies before, but they obviously didn't do a great job of it, since Rosa is now asleep in his guest bedroom. Noah is an alien, so they can't risk his body ending up in the county morgue.

T he sheer scope of it all makes Alex a little dizzy. He hasn't digested all the new information of the last few days, let alone what happened in Caulfield, and now Rosa being alive. It's overwhelming, and he can't imagine what it must feel like for Michael. Or for Isobel, but Alex knows her far less. Alex is only involved in this insofar as− well, his family running a torture chamber for aliens for seventy years.  And Michael. Alex is in this for Michael.

H e shuts down his laptop before the emotions he's kept contained for days find a way out.

*

He wakes up to the sound of screams. It takes him a few seconds to understand that they're not his own screams, even though they dragged him out of a bizarre nightmare mixing the alien prisoners from Caulfield and American-weapon-carrying Taliban. His subconscious is a minefield.

But he's not screaming, even if he's breathing heavily. No, those sounds come from his guest room, and it takes Alex almost half a minute to remember who is sleeping there, by which time he's stood up and grabbed one of his crutches to lean on and the other to use as a weapon. He groans and lowers it back to the floor.

His phone screen informs him that it's three a.m. He closes his eyes briefly, trying to keep the sleepiness at bay, and makes his way over to the guest room across the hallway.

Rosa's form is tossing and turning on the bed, no longer screaming. Alex turns on the light to avoid tripping on something and approaches, staying far enough away to avoid startling her too badly. Her brow is shining with sweat, and her face is scrunched up as if in pain.

“Rosa,” he calls.

She mumbles, but she doesn't wake up. Alex tries calling her a few more times, louder, but nothing helps. Finally, he grabs her shoulder and shakes it, bracing himself in case she lashes out.

“Um, what's going on?” Rosa mutters, as if emerging from a deep slumber. She opens her eyes in Alex's direction, and suddenly grows more alert.

Alex lets go of her arm. “You were having a nightmare.”

She blinks, and Alex can spot the moment she remember where she is and why. Her face turns into a full frown, her eyes losing the softness they got from recognizing Alex.

“I couldn't wake you up,” he adds.

“I'm awake now,” Rosa mutters.

“You alright? Do you want to talk about it?”

She pushes on her arms to sit up, and away from him. Alex takes a step back to give her the room she obviously needs.

“No, I−the fuck? Alex!”

Startled, Alex opens his mouth to ask her what's wrong, but stops when he follows her gaze down to his leg. Shit.

“Right, I forgot you don't know yet,” he sighs.

Rosa still has her mouth hanging open, her eyes stuck on his residual limb, in full view since he didn't take the time to put pants on. “What the fuck happened to you?” she tears up.

“Hey, it's okay. Let me sit down, I'll tell you.”

Rosa scoots over to make room for him − too much room, too fast. Alex has almost forgotten how people tend to react to seeing his stump. He's relieved that he  at least has  his shrinker on, as anyone seeing the naked scars feels weirdly intimate.

“I lost it in Iraq last year,” he explains. There is no sugar-coating this.

“You _enlisted_?”

“Yeah.” Alex bites his lip. She was never going to like this − but then, he never dreamed of actually getting to tell her. “Summer after high school.”

Rosa opens and closes her mouth, then rubs at her eyes.  “ I can't believe you enlisted,”  she says . “What happened to 'I will  _never_ let my father win'?”

Alex shrugs. “I grew up ?  I don't know. Things just changed.”  He hasn't felt this guilty about leaving out what happened to Michael in a long time, but he puts it on old wounds reopening. What his father did to Michael isn't the only reason he chose to enlist. It was only the catalyst.

Rosa brings her legs up to her chest and hugs her knees. “Everything is so different,” she murmurs, tears in her voice. “Last I remember, you were this rebel kid who wanted to play music, and now you're...this. And you're…” she gestures to his leg.

Alex sighs.  “ I understand that this is very strange for you, but for me it's been almost a year, I'm okay.”

“You lost your _leg_.”

“Yes. I know it's jarring, okay? Believe me, it was for me too at first. But at the end of the day, it doesn't change anything to who I am.”

Rosa shakes her head. “I don't know. I don't know who you are, now. You've aged ten years in...literally a few hours for me, nothing really makes sense. But this...I don't know, it's such a huge, visible change, you know? I could pretend to ignore the way your face is different, the lack of makeup and black clothes, how Izzy's changed, but this?”

“Yeah,” Alex murmurs. “It felt so huge to me when I woke up without my leg, too. Like the end of the world.”

Rosa nods. “That's kinda what it feels like, yes.”

“It's not, though. Just...something different. A bump in the road, almost. It evens out.”

Rosa pulls them both down until they're lying on the bed fully.  “ If what  Guerin said is true, then I got preyed on by a fucking murderous alien. Who actually murdered me. And he pretended to be my friend while wearing Izzy's face, and this Izzy doesn't know me at all but he preyed on her too.  How does that even out? ”

“Maybe you should talk to Isobel,” Alex says. “She's been through a lot, too, and you could find some commonalities.”

“She gives me the creeps,” Rosa admits. “I can't help it. I don't remember my...death, but I remember being with her− him. The way he was looking at me…”

“It's okay. You don't have to approach her if you don't want to, okay? I know it's weird.”

“I liked her,” Rosa murmurs. “Or him. I don't know. I'm so confused.”

“Liked her like−” Alex gestures.

“Yeah.” She shifts to look at him. “What happened to that boy _you_ liked?”

Alex swallows. “I left.”

Rosa sighs. “Everything's really changed.”

“I'm sorry,” Alex murmurs. “I'm sorry this situation is so complicated.”

He thinks of their teenage years, where everything was already complicated, but also so much simpler. Sure, he had to deal with his dad, and with the bullies at school, but he didn't feel so far out of his depth back then, so scared of making decisions that affect other people. He didn't have to deal with trying to pull Michael out of a booby-trapped building − or waiting for his own death in one that has already blown up.

He shakes his head a little and looks at Rosa, who is still the same teenager. The girl he looked up to, who taught him how to do his make-up and his nails and how to find the rebellion inside. Maybe he didn't ruin his own life, by enlisting, like he thought back then, but he failed that free-spirited girl in every way. He didn't even make it to her funeral, leaving Maria to go on her own.

He sees her differently, now. She's not much of a role model, nineteen and mentally ill and terrified. Alex has outgrown his fascination for her, and now she's just a kid. A kid he loves very much, but still a kid, somehow back from the dead.

_I'm sorry I can't protect you,_ he wants to say. He doesn't, because she's not quite ready for that role reversal yet. She doesn't know the person he's become.

“I'm scared.” Her voice shakes. “I want...I want Dad.”

Alex  squeezes her hand . “I wish I could just take you to him, but...I'll convince Michael and Isobel, okay? I just need a little time. For tonight, I will have to do.”

Rosa snuggles closer to his side. “Okay. You're not too bad.”

“Do you think you can go back to sleep?” Alex asks her quietly.

Rosa nods in his shoulder, but she doesn't let go of him. Right, Alex thinks, mentally giving up on resuming his night. He loves Rosa, but he's not going to fall asleep like this, however much he wants to.

It's okay, though. It's Rosa. She's alive, and that's a goddamn miracle. Alex will work on untangling everything it implies later, for now he just closes his eyes and listens to her breathing even out.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos make my day, I love hearing what you think!
> 
> You can also come and chat with me on [Tumblr](https://emma-arthur.tumblr.com/) (and get little previews of my fics every so often).


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